


I Wouldn’t Know Where To Start

by FortySevens



Series: These Shoes Are Made For Walking [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: A Post-Season 2 Fix-It, Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angstier than I thought, F/M, Groveling, Shoes, Specifically Louboutins, but Karen and Frank really need to hash out some stuff before all the happy can commence, yes the happy does commence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 00:21:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18884314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortySevens/pseuds/FortySevens
Summary: Frank Castle owes Karen Page a lot. Way more than he can repay in just one lifetime.At the very least, he owes her a new pair of shoes.





	I Wouldn’t Know Where To Start

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ck90](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ck90/gifts).



> I don’t know where this came from. 
> 
> I just had this thought about how Frank owes Karen a pair of shoes after TP2, and then I thought—he would TOTALLY splurge something ridiculous on a pair of Louboutins. 
> 
> If you’re going to grovel, better grovel right. 
> 
> Am I right?
> 
> And special thanks to ck90, because if it weren’t for their gifts to this fandom in the forms of I See Heroes and Death Was an Invited Guest, I wouldn’t have decided to shake off my own fic writing rust. This is all your fault.
> 
> ETA: EVERYONE GO CHECK OUT THIS GORGEOUS EDIT ck90 MADE FOR THIS FIC: https://fortysevenswrites.tumblr.com/post/185026221574/i-wouldnt-know-where-to-start
> 
> AND GO CHECK OUT THIS EDIT FROM THERESTLESSBROOK  
> https://fortysevenswrites.tumblr.com/post/185442923449/the-restless-brook-i-wouldnt-know-where-to
> 
> Title from Hozier’s Almost (Sweet Music), which I just discovered and like…I had no idea I actually liked Hozier’s music? Go figure. This was originally going to be called Repaid, but then again…I’m trash for titling fic after song lyrics, and especially lyrics that only make sense to me in my own head.

Karen Page rolls her neck and sighs as she walks back into the offices of _Nelson, Murdock & Page_, the weight of a long afternoon pressing down hard on her shoulders.

 

After a whirlwind week of investigations for the new cases—paying cases—the firm has taken on, Karen took a long lunch to meet with Ellison at a cafe around the corner from The Bulletin. While it wasn’t the first time she’s seen him since her exit from the paper, and it went really well—he invited her to come back on in a freelance capacity, as long as she publishes under a pseudonym, which she’s more than happy to do—it’s still a lot to even be near the building that basically served as her second home for so long.

  
She really needs to get a life.

 

Whatever that means.

 

In the office, Karen is halfway out of her coat when she sees the large brown package taking up most of the limited clear space on her desk. She stops short in the middle of the room, wracks her mind for any packages she should have been expecting and comes up empty.

 

“Decided to treat yourself, Kare?”

 

She tilts her head and finds Foggy leaning against the doorway to his office, one leg propped casually in front of the other and his hands resting in the pockets of his trousers, “What?”

 

A brow ticks as Foggy nods with his chin at the package, “Check it out.”

 

Walking to her desk, Karen’s brows take up residence at her hairline as she sees the cursive logo smacked across the far side of the package, “I,” she breaks off, shakes her head. “I didn’t order anything from there—not on our salary.”

 

Something else occurs to her, and she takes a cautious step back before turning to the other office, sees Matt standing just outside it with his cane folded in both hands, “Can you tell if there’s-“

 

He shakes his head, effectively cutting her off, “Smells like leather. Just shoes,” he says. “What are they? Foggy said he wanted to wait until you got here to tell me what they are.”

 

Karen glances at Foggy, who just grins and shrugs.

 

“Louboutins, _apparently_ ,” she says as she goes back to her desk, fishes around the top drawer for her letter opener.

 

“Who’s buying you Louboutins?”

 

Karen shrugs one shoulder rather than responding, because it’s not like Matt can’t tell anyway, and slides the letter opener over the tape line.

 

The box inside is gift-wrapped in a gorgeous, shimmery paper, and the idea of tearing at it makes Karen cringe. The shoes inside probably cost more than half her rent—and that’s the low-end of Louboutin’s offerings—so the wrapping paper must cost as much as a couple weeks of groceries.

 

Seriously, what the hell is this?

 

There’s a small white envelope with her name inked on it in fancy script taped to the top. Karen carefully peels it off the wrapping paper, pulls out a card that has a short note printed in the center.

 

_Figure I owed you a pair, Ma’am. Don’t know shit about fancy shoes, but the kid said you’d probably like these_.

 

Her jaw clenches and she takes a short, sharp breath through her nose—there’s a large part of her that wants to crumple the card and dump it, it and the probably gorgeous, expensive shoes, all in the trash.

 

“Karen?”

 

She takes a deep breath, tries to slow her heart rate so it’s not blaring at the human lie detector standing a few feet away, and she’s saved from having to answer him by the sharp ringing of her phone.

 

The number is unfamiliar—the area code is in Tampa—but she’d rather fumble through an annoying robo-call than face the now-giant elephant of a package sitting in the middle of her desk, “This is Karen.”

 

“ _Ohmygod hi! Did you get the shoes yet? Please tell me you got the shoes and tell me how beautiful they are, because I have never actually seen a pair of Louboutins in real life and you are literally the luckiest person in the universe._ ”

 

The caller is a woman, but it takes Karen a second to figure out _who_ is rambling at her because, well, of all the rambling.

 

“ _Oh, it’s Amy, by the way. Amy Bendix. We met for a hot minute at the hospital a couple months ago, and then I interrupted you and our, uh, our very grumpy mutual friend when you were having that adorably adorable conversation. I still feel really bad about that, by the way._ ”

 

What the ever-loving fuck is going on?

 

Karen takes a breath before answering, “Hi Amy,” she’s proud of how steady her voice is as she glares down at the box. “Do I want to know how you got my number?”

“ _How do you think?_ ” Amy shoots back with a laugh, and her shoulders go tense at the sound, Karen fighting back the urge to cringe—because really, Frank _has her number_ but refuses to call it?

 

Typical.

 

“ _So? What do you think of the shoes? Freaking gorgeous or super freaking gorgeous?_ ”

 

One handed, Karen pulls the box out of the bigger one it was shipped in, eases her fingernail under the fold of the wrapping on one side, “I haven’t actually seen them yet.”

 

“ _Well hurry up open it! Holy s-h-i-t, I’ve been waiting for you to get them for days! You_ have _to send me pictures!_ ”

 

A laugh breaks its way from her mouth, and Karen tries to choke it back but fails, “Give me a second, give me a second,” she mentally thinks, _screw it_ , and tears at the wrapping, lifts the lid off the box. “God _damn_.”

 

The shoes _are_ gorgeous.

 

They’re Louboitin’s classic, patent-leather black, with enough of a platform that will let her tower over pretty much _anyone_ , except maybe the New York Nicks’ starting lineup.

 

And those stunning _red soles_.

 

As angry as she is—well, not anger, it’s disappointment, and it has been since _I don’t want that_ , but—

 

Those freaking shoes.

 

On the other end of the line, Amy makes a strangled, half-shrieking sound that makes Karen wince and pull the phone away from her ear a little, “ _Well?_ ”

 

Movement flickers out of the corner of her eye, and she sees Foggy come up to stand next to Matt. Foggy looks confused, and Matt—she sees the muscle working in his jaw because of course he can hear Amy’s side of the conversation as if she was in the room with them—and she pointedly gives him her back.

 

Even so, she hears Foggy whisper to him, “ _Who_ is she talking to?”

 

Karen straightens her shoulders, resolves to block them out, because she can only handle one ridiculous thing at a time, “They’re gorgeous Amy.”

 

“ _Of course they are. You’re so lucky_ ,” Amy chirps, and then after a beat, her voice goes soft. “ _You know he wants to know you’re doing okay, right?_ ”

 

Her jaw clenches, and this time she doesn’t fight to mask the emotion in her tone.

 

“Listen Amy,” she feels the anger, the frustration and that damn disappointment, build as her mind trips back to that day in spite of the fact that she _really_ doesn’t want to think about any of it. “Fr-our mutual friend made it crystal clear where we stand, and I don’t want you in the middle of it any more than you already are. You can tell him, if he wants to know how I am, he can call me and ask me himself, and not to ask you to ask me ever again. That’s all I’m going to say to you about it.”

 

“ _Ugh, like I haven’t been trying to tell him that for_ weeks _. Maybe I should record it coming from you_ ,” Karen hears someone shout Amy’s name somewhere in the background of wherever she is. “ _I gotta go! Consider the message relayed, and don’t forget to send me those pics! Bye!_ ”

 

Before she can respond, her phone tones out that the call has disconnected, and she lets it fall to her desk with a clatter.

 

Her attention falls back to the shoes, and they’re still there, still gorgeous and black and red and she can _almost_ hear them screaming at her to try them on.

  
They make the simple Steve Maddens on her feet, ones she picked up on sale at DSW, look like the $16 trash from Target.

 

She looks up at the duo standing in front of her desk. Matt’s face is more or less impassive while also being very annoyed at the idea of Frank doing _anything_ related to her, and Foggy just looks a mixture of shocked and _very, very_ confused.

 

“Those came from Frank.”

 

It’s not a question.

 

Hell, she walked barefoot back to the office after the whole mess at the hospital, and Matt was the first person she saw when she walked into the office with news about _Frank Castle_ blaring on the television, so of course he _knows_.

 

They just haven’t talked about it.

 

He’s tried, but _she_ doesn’t want that.

 

“Matt, just,” she holds a hand up, and then presses the backs of her fingers against her mouth. “Just don’t.”

 

Foggy, on the other hand, reaches across the desk and grabs one shoe, admiring it, “ _Damn,_ these are,” he breaks off and looks her in the eye with a mock glare. “Listen, you can _never_ tell Marci that _The Punisher_ is begging for forgiveness with _Louboutins_.”

 

At least he’s reacting to Frank sort-of-but-not-really reaching out to her with humor, instead of the pants-shitting terror he used to react to him with.

 

Snapping a picture and sending it off to the now-known number belonging to the one person Frank is apparently still talking to, Karen rolls her eyes and fits the shoe back in the box with its mate, “First of all, he’s not begging for _anything_ , and second, I can never tell Marci about Frank, _period_.”

Because that would be a shitshow of _epic proportions_.

 

And it’s not like she has reason to, since Frank’s not _actually_ in her life.

 

“Well, yeah,” Foggy goes on, either not noticing or blissfully ignoring the mental gymnastics going on in her brain. “But really, please, please, please never tell her about the shoes. I can’t beat that until we get like, a hundred more clients. If I have to grovel right now, I have to grovel on a _budget_.”

 

“Or, your very wealthy girlfriend can buy her own damn shoes.”

 

“Karen,” Matt says around another strangled sigh, sounding like he’s about to start in on a lecture.

 

But there is no universe where she’s going to sit through one, especially not after literally everything that’s happened to her sine she woke up in her first New York apartment, covered in Daniel’s blood.

 

She was a different person then.

 

“How’s Elektra doing?” She askes, pointed, everything in her holding back a laugh when Foggy chokes on air and turns on his best friend with a look of betrayal.

 

Matt’s lips thin out into a grimace, before finally, he inclines his head, “Never mind.”

 

Yeah, that’s what she thought.

 

She might not have ears of a bat, but that European lit in Elektra’s voice carries, and she has been calling Matt a _lot_ lately.

 

“Well,” she sighs, gaze falling back down to the shoes. “I’m going to go home and, I don’t know, deal with this.”

 

“Deal _how_?” Matt asks, sounding genuinely curious.

 

Her mind draws up a big, fat blank.

 

The last number she had for him was a years-old burner that’s probably long-since been waterlogged at the bottom of the Hudson.

 

After word got out that it was Dinah Madani herself who ended Billy Russo’s life— _yeah right_ —she tried Dinah and then went to David Lieberman, but drew up a blank with both. She then decided to try the one person who _had_ to know how to get in touch with Frank, but Curtis Hoyle is just in the dark as they are.

 

Now she _does_ know how to get in touch, but going through Amy is _still_ one of the absolute last things she wants to do.

 

“When I figure that out, I’ll let you know,” she picks up the card and her gaze falls back to those short lines of text—her first message from him in she doesn’t even know how long. “Or maybe not.”

 

After all, the ball is in Frank’s court now.

 

Like it always has been.

 

—

“ _You know, you’re going to have to grovel a lot more than by semi-anonymously sending sending her a pair of shoes. Even if they are expensive and gorgeous and amazing and you were completely right to ask me for suggestions. But seriously, just_ call her already _.”_

 

“ _Stay out of this, kid._ ”

 

“ _Oh no, you roped me right into the middle of this one. I’m helping you—and Karen too—whether you like it or not._ ”

 

—

Two weeks pass.

 

It’s two weeks of radio silence from Frank that, honestly, Karen expected.

 

Shoes or no, why would things change now? The _I don’t want that_ from two months ago was firm.

 

But it’s also two weeks of texts and memes from Amy that, honestly, Karen has no idea what to do with.

 

Especially because there seems to be no ulterior motive.

 

Just a ton of texts and memes.

 

And pictures of alligators, which is— _so_ Florida.

 

She hopes Amy has actual _friends_ down in Tampa, and doesn’t spend _all_ of her free time texting a secretary-turned-paralegal-turned-reporter-turned-PI and a caffeine-addicted vigilante.

 

It’s Saturday when Karen wakes to a message waiting in her voicemail box from an unknown number, and if it weren’t for her phone’s voicemail transcription function, she probably would have just deleted it, because she’s just in that kind of mood and has been since the Louboutins appeared on her desk.

 

Sitting in bed with her blankets pooled around her lap, Karen toys with her phone, debating if her sanity can handle hearing Frank’s voice again. She huffs a breath through her nose and shoves a hand through her hair, scowling when she encounters a ton of tangles courtesy of another restless night.

 

She doesn’t remember the last time she got a full night’s sleep.

 

“Just suck it up Page,” she hisses, counting backwards from five before pressing the _new voicemail_ notification and speaker button in quick succession with her thumb.

 

There’s silence on the line for a long time before, “ _Hey Karen. It’s uh_ ,” Frank’s sigh echoes over the line, and she feels it all the way down to her toes. “ _Yeah, you already know. I was thinking maybe, if you wanted, we could—I don’t know. Talk? I guess we should—no, I know we should talk. If you want to._ ”

 

The message ends with Frank saying he’ll be down by the river—the same place they met when he asked her to stop investigating the Kandahar case—this afternoon at 4.

 

The timestamp on the message shows 3:33 a.m., like he waited late enough to ensure that she wouldn’t answer the phone when he called.

 

Her first thought is _coward_ , but then she shakes it away.

  
After all, he could have gone on _not_ calling her for the rest of ever.

 

Huffing another sigh, Karen drops the phone and falls back onto her pillows, covers her face with her palms.

 

The last thing she wants to do is get her hopes up, to think that this could be anything more than Frank just apologizing for whatever he feels he has to apologize for before slinking off into the dirty underbelly of Hell’s Kitchen, never to be seen again.

 

For her sake, that’s the _best_ outcome she can hope for.

 

Because anything else—

 

No.

 

She’s not going to go there.

 

She can’t afford to go there.

 

Her heart’s already cracked. No need to make it worse.

 

—

It’s a cold but dry, very early Spring day, and Karen casts a glance outside her window before turning back to her closet to debate what shoes to wear with her tight sweater and flowing, wide-leg slacks that tie at the belt. Any one of her options would work just fine, but—

 

With a shake of her head, Karen pads out of her bedroom on bare feet, stops in front of the shoe mat just off the hallway leading to her front door.

 

The Louboutins sit in the center, their bright red bottoms facing the room.

 

She’s only worn them a handful of times—the night she got them around the apartment to break them in, at a happy hour-turned-dinner in Midtown with Trish, and playing third-wheel at dinner with Foggy and Marci where she very much did _not_ tell the real story about how she procured the shoes—and now gets to deal with the fact that Marci is convinced Karen has a secret boyfriend.

 

Foggy owes her _big time_.

 

She’d wear them every day if she thought she could get away with it—they’re comfortable and gorgeous and make her legs look _amazing_ —but since she can’t, she keeps them by her front door. Looking at them makes her happy, and she knows full well that she needs as many things that will make her happy in her life as possible.

 

Of course, what would _actually_ make her happy—

 

No.

 

She’s not going to go there.

 

Sliding into her coat, she steps into the shoes and grabs her purse—double checks that her .380 is safely in the pocket it’s supposed to be in, because Fisk is in prison and Billy’s dead but she’s not _stupid_ —and heads for the river.

 

It’s sunny but even colder down by the water, and Karen digs her hands into her coat pockets as she approaches Frank from the left, well within his eye-line.

 

He looks good, but he also looks like shit—a dichotomy that only someone like Frank Castle could master.

 

Because while the scars on his face have healed to barely-there white lines and it doesn’t looks like he’s propping himself up on the railing because that’s the only thing keeping him upright, there’s exhaustion radiating from him everywhere. It’s in the set of his shoulders, the way he won’t _really_ look at her as she approaches, and the dark circles ringing his eyes. But it’s mostly the fact that his trigger finger is _tap, tap, tapping_ away against the coffee cup in his right hand.

 

The whole picture is hard to look at.

 

Harder than that first day in the hospital, a lifetime ago when he was covered in bruises, strapped down and hopped up on enough pain medication to choke a horse, and surrounded by that stupid line of red tape.

 

Back before any of this really started.

 

Karen stops short a few feet away when—for all that she thought about all the ways this conversation could go on the way to the river, now that she’s there and he’s right in front of her—she realizes that she doesn’t actually know what to say to him.

 

The _I don’t want that,_ after all, was pretty firm.

 

What else is there to say?

 

But then she opens her mouth, and apparently a coherent string of words come out, “You know, I wondered if you disappeared off the face of the earth for everyone, or if I was just special.”

 

Frank makes that stupidly endearing face—the half-smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes and Karen’s heart clenches hard in her chest—but he’s still looking down at his coffee, and that clenching feeling turns into a _stab_ , “Hi Karen.”

 

Deflating a little at the rasp of his voice, she sighs and takes those last few steps to his side, props her elbow against the railing and looks at the side of his unbruised face, because that’s all he’s giving her, “Hi.”

 

He continues to stare down at the coffee cup, and Karen runs a hand through her hair, “So? You said you wanted to talk.”

 

“Said _we should_.”

 

Taking a slow breath, Karen holds it for a ten count, but Frank doesn’t say anything more, so it’s a good thing her hands are empty because she kind of wants to chuck something at his head, “So stop being a goddamn pain in my ass and _talk to me_.”

“Yeah,” he finally grunts. “Well, you know what they say about monsters. They never do what they say they’re going to do.”

 

She _hates_ that word.

 

“If you were as much of a monster as you insist you are, you wouldn’t have brought me these shoes.”

 

She knocks the point of her toe against his calf. It’s not sexy, like when a woman in media—usually wearing a pair of shoes like hers—runs the point of her shoe up the leg of the man she’s pursuing.

 

No, this is more of an, _I’m knocking into you with my toes because it’s the only thing stopping me from taking this shoe off and beating sense into your thick skull with it_.

 

“You like ‘em?” He asks, like that’s the most important thing they need to talk about.

 

Karen resists the urge to roll her eyes, “Of course I do. Thank you,” Frank dips his head, but doesn’t seem to be willing to say much more. “So? What is this then? I distinctly remember you telling me to walk away the last time I tried to have a conversation with you.”

  
Very distinctly.

 

The memory shows up in her nightmares a _lot_.

 

“I’ve been trying to get my shit together since—since everything,” he finally says.

 

And okay, now they might _finally_ be getting somewhere.

 

“Everything is a lot. Are we talking since The Blacksmith? Since Lewis? Or since the hospital when _you told me to walk away?_ ” Her voice breaks a little at that last part, and she looks out to the water because looking at _him_ is just too hard right now. “I feel like we’re not on the same page and I just can’t keep that up anymore.”

 

Frank sighs, finishes the last of his coffee before tossing the cup into a nearby trash can, “Can barely keep up myself,” he mutters, turns on the railing so he’s finally facing her. “It hasn’t been easy. I don’t—I don’t know-“

 

She’s not going to make him finish.

 

“Then why didn’t you tell me _that_ instead of telling me to walk away?” Shit, she’s really harping on that, isn’t she? ”I could have helped you.”

 

“It wasn’t about that,” Frank scrubs his palm over his head—he’s still got the crew cut, so whatever papers Madani set him up with after the carousel incident must still be in play if he’s not looking like the overgrown hipster he was when he first came out of the woodwork looking for her. “The longer you were in that hospital room with us, the more danger you were going to be in.”

 

“Frank-“

 

“No. Listen to me Karen. I would have done anything to get you out of that hospital in one piece. If Russo-“ Frank spits the name, and the part of Karen that killed James Wesley with his own gun wishes she could plug Russo a few times too. “If he got wind that I was trying to protect you both, I wouldn’t have been able to-” he cuts himself off, throat working, but tries again. “I couldn’t protect you and Amy at the same time, and if something happened to you-“

 

Her jaw ticks—there are so many things she wants to say right now, and she used to be _so fucking good_ with words, but now it’s all a jumble that for the life of her she can’t get straight.

 

Frank reaches across his body and grabs the wrist she propped up on the railing—it stalls her brain right in its traitorous tracks. He turns her hand over, sneaks his fingertips under her sleeve just as hers slide over the calluses on the heel of his palm and settle on his hammering pulse.

 

It’s a hell of a tell.

 

“Russo’s dead,” she says in the quiet that settles between them, his pulse still skittering under her fingertips and it’s no wonder his trigger-finger is twitching away right now. “What do we do now?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

The way he says it and _means it_ —for all that their old track record insists that he doesn’t lie to her—it makes her heart hurt.

  
He’s just _lost_ , and she’s kind of being a bitch.

 

She has a right to be, of course, but—it’s probably not even the point.

 

Because he’s standing in front of her and he’s not asking for help, except—

 

_He is_.

 

This isn’t the first time, and Karen _knows_ he knows how to ask—because Lieberman scared the _shit_ out of him before Frank discovered he was a bathrobe wearing dweeb with ridiculous hair.

 

But right now, he can’t even get the words out.

 

And she knows exactly how that feels.

 

Karen sniffs back the tears stinging at the corners of her eyes, swipes across the bridge of her nose with her free hand, “You’re making it really hard for me to stay mad at you.”

 

“I’m not sorry?”

 

A watery laugh breaks from her throat, and she presses her hand back over her eyes like it’s the only thing stopping her from bursting into an irrational mess of tears in the middle of the riverwalk.

 

Using their joined hands, Frank tugs her to him, wraps his arm around her back. He shifts his grip from her wrist to her hand and holds them against his chest, presses his nose to her temple, “I missed you Karen,” he murmurs against her hairline, rests his mouth against the thin skin next to her eye. “Don’t ever think I didn’t.”

 

There are so many things she could say, that she wants to say to him, but—

 

Hopefully there will be time for that.

 

“I missed you too,” she says instead, curls her free arm up his back and hooks her hand over his shoulder to keep him in place against her. “Just—I need you to stop dropping off the face of the earth on me.”

 

Frank tugs her even closer, if that’s even possible, and then his lips are on her cheek—it’s all she can do to keep from shuddering against him, “I can work on that.”

 

It’s probably the closest thing to a guarantee she can ever get from him.

 

—

Karen takes Frank home.

 

He doesn’t protest when she pulls him away from the river, which means he’s _just tired enough_ not to think that this is an absolutely terrible idea. And even better, he hasn’t let go of her hand since they started walking.

 

It’s a good sign.

 

And she’s not trying to hope for anything, but—

 

But.

 

They don’t say much on the trip across town, both still stuck in what whirlwind of thoughts that make it impossible to come up with anything coherent.

 

So they don’t even try.

 

They’re standing in front of her door, Karen fishing one-handed through her purse for her keys when Frank sighs and looks down at his boots, “Shouldn’t do this.”

 

It’s difficult, but she resists the urge to snap at him, flicks a quick glance up and away from the inconveniently infinite depths of her purse, “According to who?”

 

“Common sense,” he deadpans.

 

Now Karen rolls her eyes and tugs on his hand, “We’re way past common sense at this point. Might as well get used to it.”

 

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” He asks, looking at her from the side, and she can almost see signs of a smirk twisting the corner of his mouth.

 

Half her brain thinks he might even be _flirting_ , in his own way, but sanity reasserts itself as she wraps her hand around her keys.

 

Actually? Screw sanity.

 

She’s going to flirt.

 

Karen smirks right back, “And you wouldn’t?” She counters as she opens the door and tugs him inside.

 

With the door shut and locked behind them, Frank stops again, and part of Karen things she’s going to have to convince him down every step of the way _into_ the apartment, which is a far cry from the last time he was here, following her right inside, accepting a beer from her fridge and giving her flowers.

 

Her brow ticks in wordless askance, but Frank just shakes his head and tugs her back to him, tilts his forehead to hers.

 

And just like that, they’re back in the elevator, caught between floors of a hotel reeling from way too much C4 and trapped in an eternal second where the only thing they had to worry about was how to stand tall in the midst of the disaster swirling all around them.

 

Lost in the moment, she lets her eyes drift shut, “Just let yourself have this, Frank. It’s okay to want this.”

 

He sighs again, but doesn’t say anything.

 

It’s long minutes, but maybe it isn’t, before he steps back, and in another blink of an eye he’s sprawled out on her couch and she’s digging through her fridge for a couple beers.

 

All of this has happened before.

 

But this time, Karen chances a glance at him out of the corner of her eye, lets her gaze linger as the fridge door falls against her arm, because Frank doesn’t look like a rabbit about to bolt. No, he looks like he’s melting into the worn fabric of her couch, one large palm pressed over his eyes as his legs stretch out toward her coffee table.

 

He _almost_ looks comfortable in her space.

 

It’s a heady thing that she is not going to let herself think about.

 

Not yet.

 

Karen takes a very long drink before padding as quietly as she can—not nearly as soundlessly as Frank can manage, but then again, she was never in spec ops. He doesn’t move as she approaches, though she knows he knows exactly where she is at any given moment, and part of her wonders just how far he’s going to let her push this.

 

She drains half her bottle before leaving both on the coffee table, settles on the couch with her knees pressing into the side of his left hip.

 

For the moment, she settles her side against the back of the couch and just watches him, revels in the fact that he’s _here_ and waits to see if he’s going to make a move. But all he does is shift his thumb off his eye so he can look at her, his brow ticking in silent askance.

 

Running her fingertips over the back of his hand so she can trace his scarred knuckles, Karen lifts the hand off his face, tangles their fingers together and drops them to her lap. She slides her free hand up his shoulder, brushes her thumb over the barely-there scar that crosses low over the side of his neck. His eyes go wide and dark and focus on her face.

 

Emboldened by the fact that he’s not pulling away, Karen rises up on her knees a little and brushes her lips against the scar above his ear, drops down to the faded line below his left eye, and then down to the scars that criss-cross over the hinge of his jaw. The way he shudders against her is so satisfying, as is the way he drops her fingers and grips around the top of her knee.

 

Karen cups his cheek in her palm, turns his head toward her so their noses brush, and she feels his breath gust over her mouth in the second before she leans up and kisses the long ridge of scar tissue over his temple—one of the many scars he earned while trying to get to her and save her life at the hotel.

 

“ _Karen_ , I-”

 

When he breaks off and swallows hard at whatever he was about to say, Karen lets her hand slide down to the side of his neck, runs her thumb against his throat, “It’s okay, Frank,” she whispers against the remnants of the wound that was meant to put him down for good. “It’s okay.”

 

She pulls back a little, just enough so she can kiss the bump on the bridge of his nose left from one too many breaks, and then presses another between his brows before she tips her forehead back against his.

 

This time, she doesn’t feel the pull back to the elevator, the stench of cordite and blood thick in the air.

 

No, this time it’s the light-sweet scent from the ocean-spray candles she burned the night before, the couch cushions softs against her shins a counterpoint to the way Frank grips her knee tight, his other hand curled around the wrist resting against his shoulder.

 

His eyes are dark, pupils blown out larger than she’s ever seen them, something flickering in the depths that she just can’t—

 

But _shit_ , she’s hoping.

 

“Karen,” he rasps, her name sounding like it sticks in his throat, and his hand moves from her knee to her neck, thumb tracing back and forth over the invisible line between the mole under her jaw and the other at her throat. “Tell me to walk away and I will.”

 

“Hell no,” she hisses, keeps her forehead against his even as she narrows her eyes to a glare, is comforted when he doesn’t look away, though part of her knows that a part of him wants to. “You and I—we’re not going to do that anymore. You want in, I want in. The war is over and this time we both get what we want.”

 

The muscles in his throat work when he swallows hard, and Karen can barely breathe as she waits for him to dispute that, but all he does is brush his nose against hers, “That easy, huh?”

 

“Damn right,” there’s this bright ball of happiness burning its way up her chest, and it’s all she can do to not get ahead of herself, because the last thing she wants is to spook him. “It’s about time we had something easy.”

 

“ _None_ of this is going to be easy,” he fires back, and he’s not wrong—she knows exactly who he is and why that makes it so hard, but there’s a spark in his eye that tells her he’s just being contrary for contrary’s sake.

 

Karen rolls her eyes, kisses the side of his nose, “We’ll figure it out. _We_ will figure it out.”

 

The palm on her neck slides up to cup her cheek, Frank’s fingers sliding into the fall of her hair.

 

In a blink, she’s back in the hotel kitchen, choking on dust and covered in debris—but she blinks again and they’re back in her living room. Frank sits up a little, his gaze flickering between her eyes to her mouth as his thumb strokes her cheek.

 

He tugs her in and finally, _finally_ kisses her, his mouth soft against hers as he uses the hand on her cheek to tilt her head for a better angle. Karen hums into the kiss, her mouth falling open when his tongue slides over her bottom lip.

 

Karen rakes her nails over the short hairs at the nape of his neck, and when he growls into her mouth she nibbles on his upper lip, grins against his mouth when he tightens his grip on her hair and pulls her even closer. Melting against his chest, Karen strokes her hand down his side, feels through his shirt for the scar from the bullet he took from Lewis to save her life.

 

He pulls away and her eyes snap open at the abruptness, just in time to see him try and fail to stifle a jaw-cracking yawn.

 

“Shit, sorry, sorry,” he scrubs his hand over his mouth, and his ears go bright red and his neck goes hot under her palm, which is—the _most_ endearing thing she’s ever seen. “It’s just—I haven’t been sleeping well since-”

 

_Ever?_

 

Karen chuckles low in her throat, darts in to kiss him again, “It’s okay,” she murmurs against his mouth, and then gets up, tugging him with her. “Let’s go lie down.”

 

The rest of the night, their beers go untouched and sweat rings onto the surface of her coffee table.

 

It’s okay. It’s a shitty table anyway.

 

—

The next morning, Karen pads back into her bedroom, her phone in her hand and the long sleeves of Frank’s shirt gathering over her palms.

 

She pauses in the doorway takes in the way Frank watches her through half-closed eyes. He’s sprawled against her pillows with a hand tucked behind his head, the bedcovers rumpled at his waist. A shaft of sunlight from her bedroom window slashes gold across his chest, highlighting the old wounds and jagged scars she traced with both her hands and her mouth in the nighttime hours.

 

Frank slides his right hand over the open spot on the mattress in wordless invitation—his trigger finger is steady, for now—and she runs her hand through her hair as she climbs back into bed.

 

“Where’d you go?” He asks after she strokes her hand over the shadow of scruff on his jaw, kisses him and settles under his arm.

 

His hand slides up her back and into her hair, stroking gently like he has all night and—Karen can _really_ get used to this. She hums happily when he tugs at her hair a little, runs the hand not holding her phone down the line of his abs—freak of nature almost has an eight-pack—and settles her fingertips against the cut of his hip, grins when his leg twitches under the covers.

 

“ _Karen_ ,” he tugs at her hair again in light admonishment, and she shivers against him. “What’re you doin’?”

 

Flipping her phone into the hand caught between them so she can keep her hand on his hip, she unlocks it and opens her texts, “I’m texting Amy.”

 

The grunt Frank makes rumbles through his chest, and Karen digs her nails into his skin until he grabs her hand, laces their fingers together, “ _Why_ are you texting her?” He asks like the two of them talking is the worst thing to happen to him.

 

He can be such a dramatic asshole sometimes.

 

Plus, he brought _all of this_ on himself.

 

“Oh _relax_ ,” she snorts, leaning up to press her lips to his jaw before angling the screen so he can see the as-of-yet unsent message.

 

It’s a picture is of their shoes, her Louboutins lined up neatly next to Frank’s battered combat boots.

 

And the message, a short and sweet, _FYI_.

 

Frank snorts, “Really, ma’am?”

 

“Don’t _ma’am_ me with your hand on my butt.”

 

He still looks at her with that pointed look, and she rolls her eyes when he squeezes her butt cheek in retaliation, “What?” She shoots back, tossing her phone to her nightstand and rolling over so she can hook her knee around his. “Do _you_ want to be the one to tell her?”

 

“Shit, no.”

 

Karen leans up, props her elbow on the flat of his shoulder and cups his cheek, running her thumb over the criss-cross of scars, “Yeah,” she murmurs against his mouth. “That’s what I thought.”

 

With a growl, he rolls them over and kisses her hard.

 

Distantly, Karen hears her phone vibrate a racket against her nightstand, but as Frank trails a line of kisses down her neck and across her collarbone—

 

She has _much_ more important things to worry about.

 

Amy can wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Like I said, I have no idea where this came from. Or how this ended up being over 6,500 words. Seriously shaking off that writing rust, I guess. 
> 
> And no shame to those who shop at Target, I actually still have a pair of heels from there that were my go-to in college. So tall and so comfortable.
> 
> As for Karen keeping the shoes by her front door, that’s a nod to what I do with my favorite pair of glittery Steve Maddens. They make me happy—seriously, they’re rainbow freaking glitter—so I keep them by my front door.
> 
> One day, I will add a pair of Louboutins to my shoe collection. One day soon.


End file.
